3rd party router not working.

We can address your concern about your 3rd party router connection, Aalte12.

We can't guarantee that 3rd party equipment will work as intended with AT&T gateways. In addition to reading our article on setting up your 3rd party devices and making sure that you set up IP Passthrough correctly, we recommend reaching out to Netgear's support team for assistance.

If you need further assistance, we have another team that may be able to help.

Aminah, AT&T Community Specialist

Thanks. I spoke with AT&T for 2 hours yesterday trying to figure it out and nothing. So I will work with Netgear and see if they have a solution 

I hope you can provide Netgear more information than you've provided here.

Well I got a generic " ooo might just not work response" from ATT here so why continue. ATT has always struggled to work with people that use high end routers with various settings. I would never use if it it wasn't only service at my apartment. 

I've never messed with passthrough. How or why is it used?

@scole250  AT@T gateways do not have a true bridge mode so if one is to use a third party router you need to place the gateway in pass through mode so that the secondary router handles all of the routing and WiFi duties. You also avoid the possibility of a double NAT which can cause issues.

^ that. Att puts their crappy little router inside a metal box in my apartment so it has horrific signal and I can't Ethernet to it so it's practically useless. And due to it being att its a whole ordeal just to use my own functioning equipment. 

Can you use the netgear to bridge with another but not use NATing on netgear and still use the AT&T for NATing? I mean disable the wifi on the AT&T and just use the netgear as a wifi access point and bridge another to the netgear if you want a mesh. Use the AT&T gateway, NATing and DHCP?

Oh, you say you have no physical access to the AT&T to connect a ethernet cable? Why is that?

Because it's in a metal box in the laundry room 😂 poor design.  However I did get them to come out and run an Ethernet line to the room (with a hefty fee of course). But the issue is the passthrough isn't working in that my Netgear router doesn't see the data coming from the the att router. Like it doesn't even see that it has something plugged into the WAN port.  

Also I don't need a mesh setup. I just need one good functional router that I have access to Ethernet ports on. The att one checks none of those boxes. Horrible signal in the apartment and no access. My 1 router is more than capable of covering the area I need it to.  It was doing it in my last location. 

I've used many internet companies ( moved 11 times) and att is far and above the worst company to try to use your own stuff with. 

Why mess with passthrough? Just use the netgear as a wifi access point and turn off the AT&T wifi but let it handle router, nat and dhcp? You don't to nat with the netgear. Connect the ethernet to LAN port. Are there features other than wifi access you want or need to use on the netgear? I've used wifi routers as simple wifi access points many times and never had to use full router functionality for attached wireless clients to access the internet. The AT&T router is the gateway they are all set to through DHCP on the AT&T.